The Death Of The Internet

How Industry Intends To Kill The 'Net As We Know It

By Jeff Chester

(Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy)

The Internet's promise as a new medium -- where text,
audio, video and data can be freely exchanged -- is under
attack by the corporations that control the public's access
to the 'Net, as they see opportunities to monitor and
charge for the content people seek and send. The
industry's vision is the online equivalent of seizing the
taxpayer-owned airways, as radio and television
conglomerates did over the course of the 20th century.

Can You Trust Your Computer?

By Richard Stallman

Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their
computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call
"trusted computing," large media corporations (including the movie companies
and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft
and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you.
Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan
would make it universal.

Classics from the Archives:

"Revolt of the Scientists"

By Anton Pannekoek

(From Retort, Vol. 4, # 2, Spring 1948)

Panic pervades the intellectual layers of American society. Whereas the peoples of Europe were used to war and damage, to destruction and insecurity in life, Americans felt safe in being separated by oceans from dangerous foes, until the atom bomb fell upon Hiroshima; the first scientists, realizing what it meant, called themselves "frightened men."

"Where Do We Go From Here?"*

Jenny Marketou interviews Ricardo Dominguez thing

The events of the recent history which followed 9/11 have changed the term of the debate about hacking, hacktivism and electronic disobedience leading often uncritically to a term of threat,criminality,cyberterrorism and bad things in the name of the public security. As we all know there are many kinds of " hacking" as it is the nature of hacking to be destructive and constructive as well as "to discover freely, to invent freely, to create and to produce freely", to quote McKenzie Wark.

"Giving is Receiving"

Richard Barbrook

One of the most striking features of the Net is the ubiquity of its hi-tech
version of the gift economy. When you go on-line, most information is
available for free. Other users are happy to share music, movies and
software with you. People spend hours building websites which they don't
charge you for visiting. You are invited to join listservers which will
fill your in-box with e-mails every day. Compared to the media developed
during the past 200 years, what makes the new media into something new is
the vitality of these non-commercial activities. Information is for sharing
not for selling. Knowledge is a gift not a commodity. The Net is a strange
and novel form of mass communications.

nolympics writes

Julian Stallabrass reviews Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software. From New Left Review. Stallamn is Mister Copyleft, a programmer and activist prominent in the free software and digital commons world.

http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR24907.shtml"

Net Warfare Comes To America

Lawrence Davidson, CounterPunch, 9.24.2002

A new front in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been
opened in the United States. This has not been done by
Islamic fundamentalists, or radical Palestinians. It has
been done by American and Israeli computer hackers. Action
on this new front has taken the form of identity theft,
harassment, incitement to harassment, defamation of
character, and malicious misrepresentation through the
misuse and misappropriation of computer e-mail facilities
and lists. In the process, the reliability of the web based
system of communication has been undercut, the integrity of
some very prestigious universities have been called into
question, and the judgment of law enforcement authorities
made to look tainted with bias. Let me give a number of
examples.

hydrarchist writes: The next episode in the peer to peer wars is underway. This breaking story is taken from the excellent Infoanarchy site.

" In an unprecedented move, the Danish police has shut down at least six servers on the eDonkey2000 network on Monday (Heise has a German summary). eDonkey-servers are similar to Napster servers -- they do not host any actual files (and unlike Napster, eDonkey indexes much more than just music). Apparently, Danish police acted under pressure from the anti-piracy group, Antipiratgruppen. One of their representatives even accompanied the police raid on one eDonkey server operator's home.

The operator of that server, Siffan, has contacted an attorney and has gained access to a friend's computer. He is blogging the events as they unfold, currently in Danish, but English translations will follow soon. According to people on the #SiffansPlace IRC channel, 11 more eDonkey client users were "busted", but only 2 persons were charged. More details as they emerge.

Read more at Infoanarchy"

hydrarchist writes:

"Towards an ‘Army of Ideas’—

Oppositional Intellect & The Bad Frontier

J. J. King

[...] you strive to take away my livelihood, and the liberty of this poor weak frame of my body of flesh, which is my house I dwell in for a time; but I strive to cast down your kingdom of darkness, and to open hell gates, and to break the devil’s bonds asunder wherewith you are tied, that you my enemies may live in peace; and that is all the harm I would have you to have.

Gerrard Winstanley[1]

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

William Shakespeare

Introduction

To commence anecdotally: I recently ecountered, uncoincidentally in a part of London that has over the last five to seven years been gentrified beyond anything but the barest degree of recognition, in a cafe that has got itself up in some sort of impression of a souk, and in which coiffed quasi-bohos lounge with lattes and smouldering joints, a young ‘cracker’ who had until recently been part of a pirate community which took part both in the ‘chipping’ of mobile phones (releasing a user’s hardware from indenture to a particular service provider), the copying of DVDs, modification of gaming consoles, so on. The person in question had been engaging in such activities for years, he explained, until realising that, far from challenging traditional market structures, his group was actually performing a form of underground marketing that had already been recognised by certain corporations – he named Sony specifically. Increasingly those corporations were using underground ‘cracker’ communities to distribute early versions of their products which, with their readymade illict halo, had an instant appeal to the youth market at which they were largely targeted. Disgusted, the young activist immediately ceased his activities.[2]

September Deadline: Can the ICANN Model Be Revised?

On September 30, 2002, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the US Department of Commerce (DOC) and ICANN, the corporation created to private the infrastructure of the Internet, will expire. As the deadline
is soon approaching, a burning question remains: Can a private entity and
a public treasure be mixed?" (The public treasure is the Internet.)

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